


Hope and Ash

by codenametargeter



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: 2nd person POV, Crimson Flower Route, Gen, set during 'The Master Tactician'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25900933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codenametargeter/pseuds/codenametargeter
Summary: This is what it feels like to be Claude von Riegan as the Adrestian Empire marches on Derdriu.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Hope and Ash

**Author's Note:**

> There's a Writing Style Challenge going around on Twitter where people call out characteristics of your writing style and then you're supposed to try and write something with out them. Anyways, this was my attempt. I managed to hit uhhhh some of the things. Not all. 
> 
> Five points if you know whose style I borrowed instead. :P

This is what it feels like to be Claude von Riegan as the Adrestian Empire marches on Derdriu: 

You’re the leader of the Alliance but for how much longer is in question. You’ve fought with your words and with your bow for years now but it’s still come down to this. You’ve planned and you’ve plotted and you’ve schemed and you think you’ve accounted for all of the outcomes but you can’t be sure. How could you be?

(Maybe in another world, you have a better chance.) 

One way or another, everything will change after today. You’d have to be a fool to not be able to recognize when the end of how things are is marching towards you and Claude von Riegan is anything but a fool. 

You draw your bow and take careful aim. The arrow strikes a target in Almyra. You’re not Claude there, you’re Khalid. The bow’s too big for you and they laugh at the sight but you’re determined to draw it because you have to show them you can do whatever they can. If you practice enough, you’ll hit the center of the target every time. You’ll prove yourself to your half-siblings. You have to prove yourself and them that show your Fódlan blood doesn’t make you lesser like they cruelly claim.

As you notch another arrow to try again, you can feel their eyes on you. They watch and don’t hide it. This arrow doesn’t hit the target square in the center and neither does the third or the fourth or the fifth or the sixth. You take a deep breath and try to ignore how your arm aches from the strain of drawing yet again. Slowly, you let your breath out and let the arrow fly and don’t breathe again until it hits the Adrestian soldier, knocking them to the ground. 

“Hilda,” you say out of habit before remembering she’s gone. You watched her die. 

“It’s been fun, Claude,” Hilda says as her blood stains the cobblestones beneath her.

Hilda sits down beside you in the dining hall. She’s done the same thing every day for the last two weeks. “Hey Claude. Anything good happening today?” She steals a piece of fruit off your plate before you can reply.

Which is fine. You’re not going to eat it anyways and push the rest towards her. “Hey Hilda. Are you ever going to tell me what this is about?”

To her credit, she doesn’t try to play dumb. It’s not like you didn’t see through her act week one. “The other house leaders all have a second. Someone to watch their back around here. You should too.”

You grin. “Is this you volunteering to be mine?”

“Just don’t expect me to, like, do any actual work,” Hilda gestures with the peach slice, “or die for you or whatever. Ugh.”

You always wondered how far she’d follow you once she figured out the truth but you never really wanted the answer. The life drains from her pink eyes like a rapidly wilting flower and Hilda says, “Sorry to go so soon.” 

There’s no one left to reply. So instead, you pat your wyvern and quietly say, “I guess it’s just you and me, old girl.”

This isn’t how you thought it would end when you first came to Fódlan seven years ago. 

This is what it feels like to be Claude von Riegan--no, Khalid--no, Claude von--

Khalid. Claude. Khalid. Claude. Khalid. Claude. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of who you’re supposed to be that day. Khalid is you. Claude is you. But to others, they aren’t even though they’re both names your parents gave you. People will always see what they want. And what they hate. 

“You are Claude von Riegan here,” your grandfather says firmly. “Claude and only Claude. The rest of the Alliance can never know who your mother wed. They’ll never accept you as my heir if they do and they must for the good of the Alliance.” 

But Nader still calls you Khalid when he visits and no one else is around to hear. And sometimes in front of your grandfather just because he can. It’s always worth the glares. It’s good practice for the glares you get in a few short months from the more prejudiced at the Academy. And you’re old enough now to know they’re all wrong, both here and back home. You just have to figure out a way to prove it. 

You keep firing arrows, shots getting progressively less showy but still finding their marks. There’s the faintest hint of a break in your attackers and so you take the opportunity to twirl an arrow like you used to. You’re at the Academy, spinning an arrow around your callused fingers and winking at Marianne who watches you across the classroom, making her blush, and you’re back in Almyra, trying to spin an arrow and dropping it because you haven’t learned to trick to it yet. Nader picks it up and tells you to try again because that’s the only way you learn.

Nader. He’s gone too. Alive but retreated. It’s the right thing to do for the good of Almyra. You have to think of your other home too. You’ll put up a good fight but you’re not willing to waste your people’s lives.

But perhaps you’re willing to give yours. For the right reason.

“Hey, Teach.” 

You’ve always liked them and if you can avoid fighting them, you’d prefer that but they step forward with the Sword of the Creator at the ready and you know it’s impossible so you spin one last arrow and then fire it. Impossibly, they deflect it and you know how this has to end. And really, how could it have gone any way but like this once Byleth became the Black Eagles’s teacher? (In another world… in _another godsdamned world_.) 

You put up a good fight but also, only a god, if they even exist, could stand strong against the combined fighting prowess of both Edelgard and the Professor. There is one last card you have left to play and you hope it’s enough. “I bet you’ve figured out why I was able to summon Almyran reinforcements,” you say because _really_ if Edelgard hasn’t worked it out after all this time and everything she’s seen today, maybe she’s not as smart as you thought she was. You offer your surrender. 

But there is no mercy to be found today. Not for you, at least.

This is what it feels like to be Khalid: 

Khalid whose dreams are filled with hope for a world where walls are torn down and it doesn’t matter that your mother comes from across the sea. It doesn’t matter that your father is a king of a land your mother’s people call barbarians. You look to the stars and you hope and you believe and you yearn because if you don’t, there is only hatred and you do not want to live in a world like that. 

Khalid has hope. You have ash. You’ve gotten it wrong.

You just hope Edelgard has gotten it right. 

This is what it feels like to be Claude von Riegan at the end. And then you don’t feel anything.


End file.
